Registering Custom Widgets in ArcGIS Online Experience Builder

[VisaaliS]

Hello Team,

I hope you’re doing well.

We’ve developed several custom widgets using Experience Builder Developer Edition, and have successfully deployed them on AWS, you can access the deployed widget manifest at the following URL: https://widgets.fieldseeker.com/custom_edit/manifest.json. However, we are currently facing challenges when trying to register these custom widgets within ArcGIS Online Experience Builder.

Our intent is to manage everything within ArcGIS Online (AGOL)—without relying on ArcGIS Enterprise—so that we can deploy Experience Builder apps to each customer’s AGOL environment. This will ensure that each customer has full control over their own Experience and associated configurations. This distributed control model is ideal for our use case.

Key points for clarification and support:

1. Is there a supported way to register and use custom widgets in ArcGIS Online Experience Builder, similar to what is possible with ArcGIS Enterprise?

2. Our goal is to use a combination of Esri’s pre-built widgets and our custom widgets across more than 200 customer deployments—all within ArcGIS Online.

3. Currently, all development is being done within our ArcGIS Developer Account, but we’re preparing for production rollout.

We are ready to go live as soon as this technical issue is resolved. It would be immensely helpful if you could confirm:

• Whether custom widget registration is supported directly in ArcGIS Online.

• If not, is there any recommended workaround or roadmap consideration?

• Any available documentation or steps you can share for widget deployment in AGOL environments.

Looking forward to your guidance on this at the earliest.

[JeffreyThompson2]

There is no way to use Custom Widgets in ArcGIS Online. You may use Custom Widgets on a separate site built in Developer Edition that connects to your ArcGIS Online Portal. Custom Widgets may also be used in Enterprise Edition 11 or higher.

Do not expect ESRI to add Custom Widget support to ArcGIS Online. I will go further to say that ESRI should not add Custom Widget support to ArcGIS Online. Allowing unknown, unverified code to run on the ArcGIS Online platform is an unacceptable security risk to everyone who uses the platform and ESRI itself. 

[NickCreedon]

I cannot say this is a workaround because I have failed. I was attempting a workaround by creating and publishing web tools in ArcGIS Online, then using Experience Builder, where there is an "Analysis Widget" that allows you to add published web tools. I'm not sure, but you may also be able to add URLs here to external sources. 

[TimWestern]

Just to add onto this.  @JeffreyThompson2  is right, only in Enterprise or Developer edition with an app locally can it work. Even if your organization has its own tennant within AGOL, the complexity of managing 'custom widgets', is one I can't imagine a good work around for at this time.  (Security issues already having been mentioned)

[HARTerra]

Why would there be any more security issue for a for a experience builder widget or a theme  made accessible to AGOL  over what they currently have with jupyter notebooks or custom experience builder app url registered in now?  The widget code basically runs in the users browser.  I could see where they may not want to store the widget on their servers and rather have users host the widget on other infrastructure (like what is required now for custom widget on portal experience builder), but one that is hosted on a different servers and made available as a widget to included in the app configuration can't really pose that large a security risk unless I am missing something obvious.

[JeffreyThompson2]

1. In the current environment, apps with Custom Widgets must be hosted on a separate server from ArcGIS Online. Any interactions with the ArcGIS Online server are handled through programming pathways developed by ESRI.
2. Jupyter Notebooks operate in a sandboxed environment limiting their security risk.
3. Allowing Custom Widgets in ArcGIS Online would require uploading unknown code onto the ESRI servers and that is a very big inherent risk.